William "Craig" Garrett
My
husband, William Craig Garrett, is in Ryan Correctional Facility in
Detroit Michigan.I don't know if you would know who Bill Proctor is, but
he is an anchorman on Channel 7 news in
Detroit. He has started an innocence project, and my husband was one of
his first cases. We can't afford a lawyer, so he got one, but he was running for
judge and got it, so now there is no lawyer on my husband's case. I am going to
attach a newspaper article on my husband's case. His sister has his transcripts
and all, and I intend to get those from her. She sent a brief in to the
prosecutor. My husband is facing 15-30 yrs for a crime that we have proof he
didn't do. He was supposed to have armed robbed a lady, but the prosecutor
showed a picture of my husband before the case and she was asked about it, she
said yes they did. After they sentenced him, at a later trial, she even, when
asked if he robbed her or harmed her in any way, she said no. The tire tracks
found at the scene where not his and he has polygraph tests from himself and the
people he was with that night. They all passed them and he wasn't the one who
did it. I would greatly appreciate if you would take a look at this article and
email me back. If you would like to see his transcripts, send your address in an
email and I will send you a copy. Thank you for your time.
Bridgette Garrett
Bridgett and Craig
Eight years ago, William Craig Garrett thought he had a rare second chance in
the Michigan courts.
Then-Wayne County Circuit Judge Sean Cox had ordered a new trial for the
Hazel Park native convicted in the 1995 armed robbery of an elderly woman
in her Plymouth Township home. Just four years into a 15- to 30-year sentence,
Garrett didn't expect to be eligible for parole for another 11 years.
But Cox released Garrett on bond, and he walked out of a
Detroit courtroom free of shackles and his blue prison uniform.
"The court
is of the opinion that this case presents substantial questions of law and fact
and invites further appellate review of the significant issues," Cox wrote in
one of his opinions in the case.
Garrett moved to
Kentucky, found work in construction, bought a house and got married. He
knew he could remain free on bond while his appeals progressed. When he heard
nothing from Michigan attorneys or authorities for years, he claims, he figured
his case had been dropped.
But by 2003, the Court of Appeals had overturned the order for a new trial and
denied his other pending appeals. Also, the Michigan Supreme Court refused to
hear his case. By the terms of his bond, Garrett should have turned himself in
then. He says neither his attorney nor the courts notified him and he was
unaware of warrants for his arrest until police in
Kentucky knocked on family members' doors just several months ago.
The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office says a task force is also looking for him.
Garrett, now 36, refuses to turn himself in. He says he lives on the streets,
having left his job and the home he shared with his wife. He wonders how long
he'll be able to stay on the run and if he'll ever get that new trial he once
thought he'd have. "I don't even sleep for two days at a time, just worried," he
told
Metro Times last week. "If
I did it, I'm man enough to go do the time, but it's different when
you've been set up and railroaded."
The Michigan Supreme Court and Court of Appeals do not track the number of
motions for new trial nor the numbers granted or refused, says Marcia McBrien,
court spokeswoman. But prosecutors and defense lawyers say it's rare defendants
get another chance at a jury trial or have their verdicts set aside.
Tim Baughman, the assistant Wayne County prosecutor who opposed Garrett's new
trial, says disagreements about facts are part of the trial system. "In almost
any trial, you're going to have witnesses on one side and witnesses on the other
side, and they're going to contradict each other. The jury sorts it out," he
says.
But defense advocates say the system is too weighted against defendants,
especially when the jury makes a mistake, doesn't hear all the evidence, or
hears incorrect information.
"We have a Michigan Court of Appeals that has been for a very long time very
pro-prosecution," says David Moran, an associate dean at Wayne State University
Law School who worked in the State Appellate Defenders Office for eight years.
"As a result, what that means is the relief rate, the rate at which convictions
or sentences are overturned, has gone way down in the last 20 years. There are a
lot of defendants who have meritorious appeals who lose nonetheless."
Garrett and his attorneys consider his one of those cases. Garrett was 24 when
he was released on parole in December 1994. He had served two years for
felonious assault and malicious destruction of property over $100. Putting a
documented history of juvenile crime and alcohol abuse behind him, he claims, he
moved in with his parents in Fenton and found a job with a furnace service
company in early 1995.
One of his first solo calls after supervised training was on March 10 at the
home of Eleanore Neault, then 86, on Ann Arbor Trail Road in Plymouth Township.
He says it was the only time he was at her home until last week when he stopped
on the roadway in front of the house with a film crew that was shooting footage
of him because of possible interest from a television network in his story.
Four days after the 1995 furnace cleaning, Neault, who is now dead, was attacked
and robbed.
Neault told officers a man had come to her house in the afternoon, saying he was
there to check her water pressure. He was in her basement when a second man â?�
whom she identified as Garrett from his earlier service call â?� appeared in her
driveway. She let the man in. He wanted money. When she refused, he beat her
with a knife handle, she said. After the attack, in which she suffered head
injuries, she crawled through her yard to the home of a neighbor, who called
police.
Neault said at trial she didn't know what happened to the water man.
Police tracked Garrett down and arrested him later that evening..
Garrett says police should have looked for the other man Neault said was at her
home that day. "They didn't check that out," he says.. "They had me, a guy who
had a record."
During the investigation, preliminary examination and trial, Neault sometimes
gave conflicting testimony about the time of her attack, the weapon used, the
color of the truck in her driveway the suspect could have driven and other
details. During a subsequent civil case she filed against Garrett and his
employer after his conviction, it was disclosed that she had a brain tumor
before the assault and that she suffered from minor strokes several months after
it. Garrett's attorney did not know that at trial.
"... it was practically impossible for her to testify because of her mental
confusion," Don Ferris, who handled Garrett's appeals, wrote in one of his
briefs. Ferris did not return telephone calls or e-mail messages from
Metro Times.
Fingerprints in Neault's house did not match Garrett's, and tire prints didn't
match his truck. When he was arrested less than five hours after the attack, he
didn't have the weapon the victim described nor the $100 to $150 Neault said her
attacker stole from a cracker canister.
Two alibi witnesses and Garrett passed polygraph tests after his trial. Records
show he had an hour-long service call at 2:15 p.m. in
Detroit and another in Clawson at about 6 p.m. â?� bracketing the time
the attack occurred. He had five witnesses who testified he was in
Hazel Park in between those calls. "I'd just like to say I'm not guilty,
and you're sending an innocent man to prison," Garrett said at his sentencing in
November 1995.
"The jury heard the testimony of simply witnesses that weren't credible with
regard to the alibi testimony, and heard testimony from the actual victim
herself and made their decision," Robert Stevens, assistant Wayne County
prosecutor, said at Garrett's sentencing.
After Garrett's conviction, his lawyers filed a routine appeal. It was denied.
"What could I do? Just jump up and down in my cell and scream, 'I'm innocent'?
They'd have just kept on walking. There's nothing you can do but try to get
people to help you from outside," Garrett says.
But then Cox granted him a new trial based on an alibi witness who was not
called at trial and also placed Garrett in
Hazel Park at the time of the attack. "The exercise of this discretion by
the court is ... to be done to protect the accused against mistakes and
prejudice," wrote Cox, now a federal judge in
Detroit. "The alibi testimony ... would, in the opinion of this court,
render a different result upon retrial."
Cox did not return telephone calls to
Metro Times. It's not clear what other legal avenues remain for
Garrett.
Meanwhile, he says he doesn't know what will happen to him. His parents, who
retired from Fenton to
Kentucky several years ago, have spent thousands of dollars hiring
attorneys and private investigators to help his case. His mother, who was with
him in the Detroit area last week, says she wouldn't help authorities locate
him, even if she did know where he was.
"I'm not going to turn him in and he's not going to turn himself in because he's
innocent," she says.. "If he had done the crime, it would be different."
Garrett says he would like to return to live in
Michigan. "I'd like to be free and live my life and live where I want
to," he says. "I'm just trying to get evidence together to prove my innocence."
Sandra Svoboda is a Metro Times staff writer. Contact her at
ssvoboda@metrotimes.com